Those Breast-Feeding Selfies Are Starting to Seriously Piss Off Some Moms

The "brelfie" trend has created an unexpected divide.

Breast-feeding in public: Yay or nay? Whichever side of the debate you land on, you can't help but admit it's stirred up quite a lot of conversation, and the recent "brelfie" photo trend—sharing a selfie of you breast-feeding on, say, Instagram—is no exception.

Now model Nicole Trunfio is breast-feeding her son on the subscriber cover of June's ELLE Australia, and mothers have turned to Instagram to voice their support through similar photographs of their own, using hashtags like #brelfie and #normalizebreastfeeding.

A photo posted by KayLynn Aragon (@kaylynnaragonphotography) on May 28, 2015 at 8:58am PDT

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These pictures have been heralded as important steps in fighting the stigma against breast-feeding in public, which we can absolutely get behind. But there's another side to the story, and mothers who aren't able to breast-feed exclusively are feeling criticized just like their "normalize breast-feeding" counterparts because they bottle feed.

A study commissioned by Channel Mum found that seven in 10 bottle-feeding mothers reported feeling negatively judged for their decision, and while the campaign to encourage public breast-feeding rages on, bottle-feeding moms want their choice legitimized, too.

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Zoe Armfield told The Independent that she sometimes felt "ashamed to say [her son] was formula fed, despite the decision being taken out of [her] hands a bit as it was his tongue tie that was causing problems."

No matter how you decide to look at it, it's clear that the breast-feeding debate needs to be about supporting—not attacking—all our choices. As Armfield said, "all new mums need the same support no matter how their babies are fed."